Friday, February 18, 2005

Microsoft Hit with AntiSpyware Lawsuit

A few days back I found an IP address from the Microsoft corporation in Redwood USA in the logs of my statistics counter. This user of Microsoft had done a Google search on "microsoft startpagina lawsuit", which brought him to this post: Microsoft's AntiSpyware Filters Competitor. It's on the practice of Microsoft's AntiSpyware to label Holland's most popular site Startpagina.nl, owned by search engine Ilse and a competitor for Microsoft's MSN page, as a browser hijacker and make it almost impossible for people to use it as their start page.

I didn't think much from it, except a little fantasy that the big man himself hat hit my blog. Now I might say that the people in Redmond were taking the threat from the director of Startpagina.nl to sue Microsoft seriously. Because Ilse has now actually filed a lawsuit over Microsoft practices, demanding that:

-Microsoft changes its AntiSpyware software so that user may use Startpagina.nl as their start page again

-Microsoft should provide an update of AntiSpyware for the current users that, when the installation program is opened, contains the message that Microsoft has disseminated wrongful information about Startpagina.nl

-Microsoft puts a rectification on its website and that on all pages that refer to Microsoft's AntiSpyware will contain a skyscraper with an apology text for a month

Ilse also demands 250 000 Euros for every day Microsoft does not comply with these demands, with a maximum of 20 million Euros.

This will be an interesting case on the anti-competitive use of corporate (filtering) software. And now wait if more Redmond IP addresses hit this blog (through Google, not MSN search, apparently).